Healing Split C

If California psychiatrist Nelson is correct, the hallucinated voices and visions of psychotics may lie on a continuum with the spirits and elementals known to occultists and mystics of all ages. In a challenging synthesis of transpersonal psychology, medical psychiatry and neuroscience, Nelson interprets schizophrenia, psychosis and multiple-personality disorder as altered states of consciousness involving erasure of self-boundaries and, in at least some patients, an overwhelming influx into the conscious mind of disorienting material from what Nelson calls the Spiritual Ground (equated with Brahma, Tao, The Word). Critical of the antipsychiatry movement begun by Thomas Szasz and R. D. Laing, Nelson is also dubious of theories seeking an ultimate explanation for madness in genetic abnormalities or chemical imbalances. He outlines a seven-step path of personal/spiritual growth that recognizes that madness may have roots in shocks to the fetus, the birth trauma, painful childhood experiences or dysfunctional families. (Apr.)